[Request] Accurate Black Hole Generator

[CJenkins93]

Hello, physics major here. Would really like it if black hole generators worked as they would irl. There is a perfect size to a black hole where it's small enough to decay quickly enough to produce enough radiation to power something, but big enough to where the decay is not too fast or explosive.

If you accept this idea I can go into the math, and what that perfect size is.

Too big and it'll radiate too slowly to produce useful amounts of power. Too small and it will decompose too quickly(and possibly destructively) to warrant the resources it costs to make.

The main way of implementing this irl is to create a kugelblitz(black hole made of energy) using extremely powerful lasers. It might be cool to create that as an option where you set up 4-6 lasers facing a central point where they condense into a kugelblitz. Controlling the power fluctuations of the lasers would be the primary challenge. Secondary challenges may include wear and tear of the casing for the black hole and/or laser lenses. If you'd like to add an automatic failsafe to it so the casing breaking somehow dissipates the black hole immediately then that's fine too.

Initially powering the lasers would be hard, but once you get the right size black hole you're golden for several tens of years(maybe condense that down into reasonably balanced gameplay terms lol).

[voidsong-dragonfly]

Hi! Person who first proposed the black hole generator here. Yeah, it's not the most realistic thing in the world. It was meant to be a mass -> energy converter, using naturally found black holes. The current concept wasn't exactly what I wanted but it's probably the closest you'd get. While I get the desire for realism, the suggested type of battery isn't really AR's thing as is more for a mod like SMT or similar, plus it's a battery and not a generator per se - you have to put in all the energy you want to when you start the thing.

[CJenkins93]

SMT? What is that? So the black hole generator is essentially a battery that stores energy right now? I haven't been able to get far enough to really test it out in depth

[voidsong-dragonfly]

Super Massive Tech. And no, I was saying that your idea was essentially a battery - you put in a bunch of energy to remove it later.

[CJenkins93]

I think you may have misread. The black hole radiates energy due to decay via hawking radiation. The resulting heat is enough to send a rocket at 50% light speed for 80+ years. So it's like an investment of power. Let's say you invest 5 million rf into the lasers to get it running, the black hole generator would then produce several hundreds of times that for a very long time if you used just the right amount. The balancing act at the beginning could be an interesting addition to the generator and it's realistic to space travel. You could power the warp drive several times over, only being limited by the transfer rate of cables.

[voidsong-dragonfly]

I'm confused where this excess energy is coming from, then. You put in X amount of energy at the start with the laser pulse, and then at the other end you somehow made a much larger sum of energy when it was released? Not sure how that follows. If I'm missing something, though, please explain where it's coming from.

[CJenkins93]

All black holes decay over time. The larger the black hole, the slower the decay. When a black hole decays, it releases some radiation. As with all radiation, if you release enough at once, it'll produce heat energy. This is why nuclear fission reactors produce more power than the fuel you put in required to make. If you were to make a macroscopic kugelblitz(around the size of a penny if I were to guess) it would decay very quickly. So quickly that it would heat up the air around it too fast and cause an explosion. It would also decay entirely within a few minutes if not hours. So if you want to harness that energy you need to control its output. This can be done by using a larger black hole because it will decay slower. Too large and it will decay too slowly to get enough heat from it to produce power though. So there is a balance. You must make the black hole the perfect size so that it lasts long enough to not perpetually explode for a few hours, but not so long that it produces too little energy for your needs.

[voidsong-dragonfly]

Yes, I know that about energy. I want to know where the energy equivalent is coming from. It doesn't just get created out of thin air, hawking radiation simply moves mass from inside to outside and so removes energy from the hole. If you start by putting in some energy from the lasers, how do you extract more than what you put in with the lasers?

[CJenkins93]

I mean if you want to simplify it like that then sure it doesn't make sense. I'm not the one to ask about the thermodynamics of that system, I know it works, and I know why it works. Here's a video explaining it more in depth if I can post it. 5 REAL Possibilities for Interstellar Travel

[voidsong-dragonfly]

Said video specifically addresses my query and verifies my original idea, in that it has <100% efficiency and so would at best be a suboptimal battery, thus making it impossible to be used as a generator. It does so slightly indirectly, but it does so nonetheless.

[CJenkins93]

You shoot the lasers at a central point for literally a few seconds and it powers a ship for years. How is that not efficient?

[voidsong-dragonfly]

This timestamp specifically mentions it, in that the lasers need to be more powerful than the black hole they create - ie that they need to input more energy than the black hole itself produces over its lifetime.

[CJenkins93]

For an attometer sized kugelblitz you need to focus a laser of gamma radiation with about the energy the sun produces in a tenth of a second on one point and it will produce over 120 petawatts (1.2x10^17) over its 5 year lifespan. This, if captured 100% efficiently can accelerate a spacecraft to 79% the speed of light before death. Compare that to using just that same laser for thrust. You'd use a lot more energy for the same effect. So theoretically speaking, the difference in energy usage is 1.2x10^17 over 5 years(the kugelblitz) vs 1.0x10^25 every second for 5 years(the laser). Seems pretty efficient to me.

[dmodoomsirius]

Since minecraft i a building blocks game. nothing can be truly accurate. if you would like to code said thing and do a pull request it will be reviewed otherwise I do not see this being implemented at this point in time. This may be thought about in the future but for now i do not see this being implemented at this point in time. for the time being i am closing this issue. i will try to look into this in the future but as of now it is not possible.